‘Locked in his closet with nothing but a pot to piss in, as it were.’ She thought of something. ‘Maybe he had Angie locked in there?’
‘No way. She would’ve clawed through the Sheetrock and killed him.’
Faith knew that he was not speaking metaphorically. ‘Collier thinks Harding was running drug mules.’
Will gave her a skeptical look. ‘Mexican cartels don’t use doorknobs to send a message.’
She laughed, mostly because he’d made Collier look like an idiot. ‘Okay, so we’ll assume Delilah was the only woman Harding kept in his closet. Why did he lock her up?’
‘Because he cared about her.’ Will held up his hands to stop her protests. ‘Harding chose to go off dialysis. He knew he was going to die, and soon. This is literally how he planned to spend the rest of his life—drying her out.’
‘Maybe he felt responsible for fucking her up.’ She remembered the dental device by the bed in the guest room. ‘Somebody also sprang for an orthodontist. She was sleeping with a retainer.’
‘We could get Collier’s partner on that. Call all of the orthodontists in the area to see if she’s a patient.’
Faith picked up her phone and started typing. ‘I’ll pass that through Amanda,’ she said, but she suggested that Collier and Ng did the shitwork together.
Will waited until she had sent the text. ‘You said Palmer’s first big arrest was for slinging Oxy. Where was she getting the pills, do you think?’
Faith considered the question. ‘She was living in the ’hood, attending elementary school. Adderall, Concerta, Ritalin—that’s what you’d expect to find floating around. ADD/ADHD drugs. Valium and Percocet come along in middle school. Oxy is more high school, more of a suburban white people problem.’
‘So who was supplying Delilah with Oxy to sell when she was ten years old?’
‘Harding was white collar. He wouldn’t have access.’ Faith thought it through. Her mother had run the drug squad out of zone six. The evidence lockup would’ve looked like a pharmacy. ‘Harding might know somebody who had access. Maybe he located a cop with a pill problem and Harding pressured him into sharing the take.’
‘Zone six?’
She nodded.
Will’s demeanor changed.
‘Do you know somebody who worked zone six and had a pill problem who might’ve been connected to Harding?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, and he didn’t have to tell her that it was Angie. ‘She takes care of kids like that. At least she used to.’
‘Kids like Delilah?’ Faith felt her stomach turn. It was one thing for Angie to pimp out other women for high-end parties, but exploiting orphaned little girls was beyond the pale.
Will said, ‘Angie worked vice. The young ones—she kind of took them under her wing.’
‘And gave them pills to sell?’
Will rubbed his jaw. ‘Angie knows what it’s like to be stuck in that kind of situation with no one looking out for you.’
‘You’ve lost me,’ Faith said. ‘I don’t see the compassionate side of turning a ten-year-old into a drug mule.’
‘Which is worse: selling Oxy or selling sex?’
‘Those are the only two choices?’
‘For kids like that, stuck in the system, changing schools and foster homes five times a year, never knowing where they’re gonna sleep from one night to the next?’ He sounded emphatic. ‘Yeah, those are the choices.’
The mother side of Faith wanted to argue him down. The cynical side, the one who’d been a cop for fifteen years, could see the logic. Kids like that didn’t live the lives they wanted. They survived the lives they had.
Will asked, ‘How many strings did Harding have to pull to keep Delilah out of trouble?’
‘More than a harp player.’
‘Who did the favors?’
‘That’s not how favors work. You don’t talk about them. That’s kind of the point.’ Faith heard her voice echo in the food court. She sounded pissed off, and maybe she was. Sure, kids like Delilah Palmer had it bad, but teaching them how to successfully enter the criminal underworld was not the solution. ‘Jesus, Will. Do you really think Angie was giving little girls pills to sell?’
Will drummed his fingers on the table. He stared over her shoulder, which was probably one of his most annoying recurrent tactics.
Faith speared a piece of chicken. The tension over Angie’s possible bad good deeds sat on the table between them. Faith forgot sometimes how rough Will’s life had been. This was entirely his own fault. From the outside, he seemed like a normal guy. And then you noticed the scars on his face. Or the fact that he never rolled up his sleeves, even in ten-thousand-degree heat. He never talked about any of it. Actually, he never talked about anything. Like that the open cuts on his fist meant that he’d recently punched somebody. Like that his wife was probably dead. Or that his girlfriend’s heart was broken.
‘Faith?’ Will waited for her to look up. He tried to smile. ‘I feel like I need to see the rat.’
She let out a long breath that she didn’t realize she’d been holding. She pulled the video up on her phone and slid it across the table. ‘Collier threw up. Epically. The godfather of vomiting.’
Will laughed appreciatively. He played the video. Twice. Faith could hear Collier’s panicked breathing through the speaker. It got better each time. Will finally put down the phone. ‘That’s a Russian Blue.’
‘The rat?’
‘I raided a pet store once. The guy was selling exotic animals out of the back, but the front was filled with rats. Amanda made me catalog all of them.’ He slid the phone back her way. ‘Dale could’ve gone after Angie to protect Delilah. Clean up the mess before he clocked out.’
She shrugged, but the theory made sense.
He said, ‘If there’s a drug angle, that opens this up.’
‘You mean we’ll have to tell Amanda.’
Will nodded.
‘God dammit,’ Faith muttered. ‘Collier wanted to track down those gang tags in the club. I’m going to kill myself if he was right.’
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,’ Will said. ‘It’s a theory, right? We don’t know for sure what Angie was up to.’
‘Except getting paid ten grand a month by Kilpatrick.’
‘Maybe she was hooking him up with drugs.’
‘I’d buy that if they were growth hormones or steroids.’
‘He wouldn’t need Angie for that. He’d have doctors writing legal scripts.’ Will sat back in his chair. ‘Let’s say we find Delilah and she’s never heard of Angie. Then what?’
‘Then she tells us what the hell is going on.’ Faith didn’t give Will time to laugh in her face, because they both knew that was very unlikely. Girls like Delilah didn’t talk to cops. They waited out their time, then they disappeared.
Faith took out her notebook. He couldn’t read her scrawl, but she pointed to the headers. ‘Palmer was married to and possibly related to Harding. Harding lived in a house owned by a company that probably traces back to Kip Kilpatrick. Angie was working for Kip Kilpatrick. Harding hit the jackpot six months ago. Angie started getting her payday four months ago.’ She pointed to the last name. ‘They all tie to Rippy.’
Will took the notebook. He studied the names. Faith saw his eyes move, but she didn’t know how quickly he could take it in. She knew that he was better with words he had seen before, but there were new names on the paper.
Will put the notebook down. He asked, ‘What if we were building a case right now? Palmer is in the wind for whatever reason. Rippy is Teflon. The only two people we know for sure about are Harding and Angie. They were both at the same location, the club. One of them died there. The other died because of something that happened there. Probably died.’